The banking crash of 2008 and the subsequent recession has relegated the UK to seventh place in 2011, behind South America's largest economy, which has boomed on the back of exports to China and the far east.

The only compensation for ministers concerned by Britain's relative fall is that France will fall at a faster pace. Nicolas Sarkozy can still boast that France is the fifth-largest economy behind the US at number one, China, Japan and Germany, but by 2020, the Centre for Economics and business Research (CEBR) forecasts it will fall past the UK into ninth spot. Germany will also slip to seventh place in 2020.

Douglas McWilliams, CEBR's chief executive, pointed that "Brazil has beaten the European countries at soccer for a long time, but beating them at economics is a new phenomenon. Our world economic league table shows how the economic map is changing, with Asian countries and commodity-producing economies climbing up the league while we in Europe fall back."

He's right, as Inman reported:

Europe is expected to suffer a "lost decade" of low growth following a credit binge over the past 20 years. Paying back debts over a short timescale will restrict growth and prevent many countries, including the UK, from clawing back output lost in the banking crash for many years.

The European Union, recently described by one Chinese official as "a worn-out welfare society", will remain the world's largest collective trading bloc, though a recession next year is expected to hit global growth. The latest forecasts by the CEBR show world growth falling to 2.5% in 2012, a downward revision from the forecast made in September.